BMW Park Lane transformed last week. This bright and airy car showroom, with its clean architecture and uncluttered interior, and vistas of Hyde Park, turned into a catwalk – a busy runway, models parading pastel-coloured summer suits along the long and narrow interior space. BMW Park Lane was the unusual venue for designer Richard James’ 2014 Spring/Summer collection, unveiled as part of London Collection: Men (LC:M).
Only in its second year, the event has evolved into... Read More

Context matters – even in the world of luxury scarves, bags and belts – and there is arguably nothing quite as powerful as a brand with a strong narrative. You cannot invent this – well you can, but the impact isn’t quite as evocative as having inherited an intriguing story. Hermès clearly knows this. Founded in Paris in 1837 by Thierry Hermès as a house of master harness-making and later saddle-making, the company remains family-owned, has continued this blend... Read More

This is the latest Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Sou Fujimoto and unveiled yesterday. At 41, the Japanese architect is the youngest creative to participate in the design of this temporary structure that resides in London’s Kensington Garden for four months.
His creation is a delicate, three-dimensional latticed structure made of 20mm fine steel poles that forms a lightweight and semi-transparent sculpture almost blending in with the surrounding landscape. The... Read More

observations

I attended an art and design foundation course much like the famous Vorkurs run by Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, a year-long requirement for all new Bauhaus students before they could progress to study in a specific workshop. In a similar way to how the Bauhauslers ran the famous art school a century ago, mine was a place that taught experimentation and encouraged abstraction, tasking us to find our own unique solutions. And it happened to be the finest year of my formal education. The specialist art school that proceeded, failed entirely to capture my imagination, lacking the free spirit, the magical weirdness of that original school. So, I left my paints, clay, tools and camera, and took up writing.

As the Bauhaus celebrates 100, a series of publications aim to explore just how enduring the legacy of this modest art school founded in 1919 in the quiet town of Weimar. Some are assessing the impact of the Bauhaus post 1933, when the Nazis forced the final school in Berlin to close, as Bauhauslers emigrated to England and America and beyond. Others have re-published some of the original Bauhaus journals and documents. Together they tell a compelling story of the most famous school of design – a place of collective dialogues, progressive ideology, imagination and creative madness.